1. Field of the Invention
The invention disclosed herein relates to connection of mezzanine boards within computer systems, and in particular to methods and apparatus for connecting a diversity of board styles.
2. Description of the Related Art
A mezzanine board is a circuit board meant to be an extension or “daughter” of a motherboard (also referred to as a “mainboard”). Occasionally, the mezzanine board may be an extension of another board. The mezzanine board may be known by other names such as “piggyback board,” “daughterboard,” and by other similar terms. Generally, the mezzanine board will have plugs, sockets, pins, connectors, or other attachments for connection to other boards. A mezzanine board will usually plug into another board directly rather than through a computer bus.
A PCI Mezzanine Card (or PMC) is a printed circuit board manufactured to the IEEE P1386.1 standard (this standard is incorporated by reference herein in it's entirety). This standard combines the electrical characteristics of the PCI bus with the mechanical dimensions of the Common Mezzanine Card or CMC format (IEEE 1386 standard). The mechanics of a common mezzanine card (CMC) family are defined in this standard. Mezzanine cards, designed to this standard, can be used with a variety of motherboards, desktop computers, portable computers, servers, and other similar types of applications. Mezzanine cards can provide modular front panel I/O, backplane I/O or general function expansion or a combination for host computers. Single wide mezzanine cards according to this standard are about 75 mm wide by 150 mm deep by 8.2 mm high. The standard also defines a double-sized card.
Unfortunately, with a diversity of suppliers, users very often are not be able to make use of existing equipment or mix components in a cost-effective manner. Worse yet, some motherboards do not permit use of mezzanine boards at all. Accordingly, the functionality that may be obtained with a mezzanine board is not achievable.
Thus, what are needed are methods and apparatus that provide for mezzanine style connection in order to save cost of connector on systems with no mezzanine option. Preferably, the methods and apparatus enable functions such as a local area network (LAN) and provide a route out the front for open compute boxes. Further, the methods and apparatus should allow for larger heat sinks, higher power devices, drop in access of mezzanine cards then previously achievable.